Kabbalistic Yiddish
Aaron Zeitlin’s Mystical-Messianic Poetics
Nathan Wolski
9781933379852
386 pages
Cherub Press
Overview
This study presents annotated translations and analyses of Aaron Zeitlin's (1898-1973) “neo-kabbalistic” Yiddish poems written during the 1920s in Warsaw. Fusing deep zoharic knowledge with Yiddish avant-garde/modernist poetic form, Zeitlin's “cosmic poetry” represents a unique moment both in the history of Kabbalah and in the history of Yiddish literature. Metatron (a book length poem), Keter, and Yosef della Reina reveal a deep mythopoetic imagination writing at the intersection of messianism and mysticism. With a Yiddish foreword by Yitskhok Niborski.
Author Bio
Nathan Wolski is the Liberman Family Lecturer in Jewish Studies with the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University, Australia. He is the author of A Journey into the Zohar: An Introduction to the Book of Radiance (2010), the translator of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume Ten (2016), and with Joel Hecker, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume 12 (2017). He has written numerous studies on diverse aspects of the Zohar, and translated Melila Hellner-Eshed’s book, A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar (2009).
